Leanne Shawler, Artist

Yesterday, the internet buzzed with the Human Resources policy change at World Vision. I read plenty about it, from the announcement in Christianity Today to various bloggers, but this post really hit home. When Evangelicals Turn Against Children to Spite Me by Benjamin Moburg at Registered Runaway Please read it. I am already a World Vision sponsor. (I posted about my process in deciding last year.) I am planning to make an additional donation to help offset those dropped sponsorships, but I'm praying that folks won't actually go through with it and will think of the child they committed to helping.

Mirrors have been coming up a lot lately and in two opposing viewpoints. The first that came to my awareness was during the 8-week course I recently completed, Coming Home to the Body (from Abbey of the Arts), which was all about getting out of my head and to start listening and trusting my body. One of the exercises involved standing in front of a full length mirror naked. (In the privacy of my home, thanks.) The second came about at the start of Lent when Jennifer Dukes Lee gave up mirrors for Lent . You can read all her reasons at her blog , but this spun out of her writing her just released book Love Idols . Her appearance was an idol and she's giving it up for Lent in order to see herself as a reflection of God. Having just done the course on dwelling in my body, I baulked at this denial of self. (I know, I'm of the monastic bent, but self-denial isn't really my bag.) But maybe this stemmed from my lack of understanding. I look in the mirror to see if I absolut...

"When Unplugging Makes a Miracle" is a great headline, but honestly, I had forgotten I had already signed up for this particular activity when I chose my Lenten discipline of unplugging from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, so I would've been doing it anyway.  But it also caused some first world problems like: I'm unplugging, how on earth can I call you if the pickup plans change? (answer, use somebody else's phone...) I decided a happy husband who wasn't waiting for me at the wrong place would be better than keeping the fast. A miracle did happen though ... both through hard work and opened eyes. Where to start the story? Let's start with a handful of youth group kids who went to an Indian reservation one summer and came back transformed, energized to start making a difference. Two of the youth and their parents found a non-profit that builds houses (among other things) in Tijuana, Mexico. They presented this idea to my church's vestr...

Before I get started, there was one video I forgot to include in Sunday's list of God's Stories. I'm going to edit it and put it in there, but in case that doesn't show up on blog readers, etc. Here it is. It's really very moving (and I'm not even CatholicSuspect my Mum will be about the only one interested in this post. First, Disneyland, which was at the end of February. The hat I did not buy (but kind of wish I did), with my brother-in-law in the Mad Hatter Shop: The next day getting soaking wet on the Rapids ride at California Adventure (first time through stayed pretty dry, got soaked the second time): My hubby's creation at our "Legos for Lent", happening every Sunday after church this Lent: The scene is the temptations of Jesus from Matthew. That's an Ewok Jesus holding off the Lizard-Man-devil, with an angel watching on. The grey thing to the right is a solar collector (to help signify this started out in the des...

In order to reduce the clutter, I thought I should start saving some of these stories and videos that I wanted to save for the next God's Love Stories. The first is from BBC News : The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary . Amazing story. Why You Should Seek Quiet Every Day by Herbert Lui From The Guardian online: If religion exists to make raids into what is unsayable, musicians penetrate further than most Jennifer Fulwiler's 7 Quick Takes from a couple of weeks ago about her marathon audiobook recording session. It had me laughing out loud. and I might've been the last person to discover this, but 24 hours of happy is happy making I've a couple of posts to write yet, so stay tuned for posts that'll include a brief photographic review of the past month.

[This article was originally printed in the San Diego Diocesan Messenger this year. I made some edits] Chanting brings community. Yet it might seem dull to some people. After all, it’s saying a lot of words on one note, right? Well, technically, yes, but chanting unearths a simple beauty, an extra dimension to prayer. I came to chanting through the monastics. Sure, I knew about Anglican chant but I’d never been part of a congregation that did it in such a way that we all knew what note we were supposed to be singing. Either because it was too complicated, or none of us had really been properly taught. The first time I participated monastic chanting of the psalms, I got completely lost, so it’s not like I was initially excited by the idea of chanting. But then I rediscovered it during a retreat to Mt. Calvary monastery in Santa Barbara (which, coincidentally was the first place that I'd participated - but at their old location in the hills behind Santa Barbara). Th...

This should read "I unplug to Build a Miracle" I'm already unplugging this Saturday ... it turns out that I'll be unplugged anyway as I'm heading down to Tijuana to Build a Miracle . Lent can be a time for giving up something or taking on something, an offering up was how I heard it beautifully expressed today on Facebook by Christianne Squires . Also this morning, I followed a link from Facebook or Feedly, don't remember which, where the blogger (don't remember who, I was on the go at the time and didn't think to save until it came back into my mind and resonated later) said that the goal of Lent is to remember God. Last year, I wrote : " The whole point of Lent, I am finally coming around to understanding, is not giving something up or taking something on, but pausing in the headlong rush of our days to make time for God, the one who is supposed to be our number one priority but so often gets relegated to "after I check F...

So I stumbled across this event , a National Day of Unplugging. It's on March 5-6 (following the Jewish Sabbath). Here's another bonus to unplugging -- UNICEF is donating one day of water (through a sponsor) for every 10 minutes you don't touch your phone, although, technically, my iPhone is on with little messages from the sponsor so my eye still gets drawn to it. I'm trying it so we'll see how it depletes the battery as this phone isn't going to sleep either. [Edit: yeah, it does eat up the battery some and my iPhone's quite warm after 25 minutes.] At time of writing (Friday night), I haven't really decided what I'm going to do for Lent, but maybe it's keeping the Sabbath (Jewish or Christian, but not both) for that period of time. Maybe the first thing I do in the morning isn't to sit down in front of the computer.... but there are other possibilities too, coming out of the class ( Coming Home the Body: A Women's Journey toward ...